We’re doing the unthinkable.

Anyone who knows me in the context of vulnerability databases will find this post a tad shocking, even if they have endured my rants about it before.

For the first time ever, I am making it policy that we will no longer put any priority on Vulnerability Labs advisories. For those unfamiliar with the site, it is run by Benjamin Kunz Mejri who now has a new company Evolution Security.

If you read that web site, and even a history of his/VL disclosures, it looks impressive on the surface. Yes, they have found some legitimate vulnerabilities, even in high-profile vendors. Most, if not all, are pedestrian web application vulnerabilities such as cross-site scripting, traversals, or file upload issues. More complex vulnerabilities like overflows typically end up being what we call “self hacks”, and do not result in the crossing of privilege boundaries. Many of their published vulnerabilities require excessive conditions and offer no real exploit scenario.

During the past 10 months, I know of three other vulnerability databases that officially gave up on adding their advisories. Nothing public, but the internal memo was “don’t bother”. OSVDB was the holdout. We did our best to keep up with their stream of horrible advisories. I personally offered to help them re-write and refine their advisory process several times. I started out nicely, giving a sincere offer of my time and experience, and it went unanswered. I slowly escalated, primarily on Twitter, giving them grief over their disclosures. Eventually, their advisories became nothing but an annoyance and incredible time sink. Then I got ugly, and I have been to this day. No, not my proudest moment, but I stand by it 100%.

As of tonight, we are giving in as well. Vulnerability Lab advisories represent too much of a time sink, trying to decipher their meaning, that they simply aren’t worth adding. For cases where the software is more notable, we will continue to slam our head against the wall and figure them out. For the rest, they are getting deprioritized in the form of a “to do when we run out of other import sources”. Since we monitor over 1,100 sources including blogs, web sites, changelogs, and bug trackers, this is not happening for a long time.

I truly regret having to do this. One of my biggest joys of running a vulnerability database is in cataloging all the vulnerabilities. ALL OF THEM.

So this also serves as my final offer Benjamin. Search the VDBs out there and notice how few of your advisories end up in them. Think about why that is. If you are as smart as you think you are, you will choke down your pride and accept my offer of help. I am willing to sink a lot of time into helping you improve your advisories. This will in turn help the rest of the community, and what I believe are your fictitious customers. As I have told you several times before, there is no downside to this for you, just me. I care about helping improve security. Do you?